Limbaugh: US Border Agents Are Now 'Taxpayer-Paid Coyotes'

The deluge of illegal immigration children has so overwhelmed U.S. Border Patrol agents that they have become "taxpayer-paid coyotes" for the Obama administration, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said on Thursday.

"A coyote arranges transit for an illegal of any age from Mexico or anywhere else across the border," Limbaugh said, according to a transcript of his afternoon program. "They come in packs. They sardine them in vans.

"The Border Patrol is escorting these unaccompanied children across the border and connecting them with their so-called relatives who they've never met before, exactly what coyotes do," he said. "They're picking up where the Mexican coyotes leave off."

Known in Spanish as "polleros," coyotes are critical to smuggling immigrants across the border into the United States. Illegals pay to be guided through Mexico — and the fees have skyrocketed in recent months as thousands of immigrants, particularly children traveling alone, cross the Rio Grande River into South Texas.

As many as 52,000 illegal minors have been arrested at the border since October. President Barack Obama on Monday asked Congress for $2 billion to address what he has described as "a humanitarian crisis."

After touring the Border Patrol detention center in McAllen, Texas, on Wednesday, Rep. Blake Farenthold told Newsmaxthat he had met a grandmother who paid a coyote $5,000 to smuggle her and her three young grandchildren through Central America into the U.S.

"When got there, they demanded more money," the Texas Republican said, referring to the Mexican border. "She just wrote off the $5,000 and got through Mexico on their own. I wasn't clear how she got across the border without a coyote.

"She was a very strong-willed woman who didn't let herself get shaken down by the cartels," Farenthold said.

Farenthold was among several members of the House Judiciary Committee who toured the McAllen center on Wednesday. The House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday held a field hearing in the city on the issue.

Because the illegals are now being sent by bus to other cities after they are processed by Border Patrol, Limbaugh charged that the White House is using the agents to provide transportation instead of securing the nation's perimeter.

"The Border Patrol agents are meeting illegal aliens at the border. They're escorting them to their destinations in the U.S. as an added bonus," Limbaugh said. "Now, unlike the Mexican coyotes, they are doing it free.

"Well, not really, because we, the taxpayers, are actually paying them to do this."

Limbaugh also attacked the Department of Homeland Security for letting children "invent" families to take advantage of immigration laws that are more lenient toward families — even if it means connecting with people whom they've never met.

"They're letting them hook up with complete strangers and then pretending that they're relatives just to get across the border and escorted into the U.S. heartland," Limbaugh said. "They have to find Democrat-friendly lawyers to make these kinds of arrangements. … That's how they could end up in New York City. That's how they could end up on Long Island.

"And we are supposed to believe that the Department of Homeland Security is concerned about the safety of these kids?" Limbaugh asked. "They're being turned over to people that don't even know them. They're being put together with people that don't even know them."

The deluge of illegal immigration children has so overwhelmed U.S. Border Patrol agents that they have become taxpayer-paid coyotes for the Obama administration, conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh said on Thursday.
A coyote arranges transit for an illegal of any...